


Helpless

by hutchabelle



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 08:53:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6463810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hutchabelle/pseuds/hutchabelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone in Panem heard the story about the first time Peeta saw Katniss, but he never shared his most treasured memory of her with the Capitol. Prompt: School Days</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helpless

I remember the very first time I saw Katniss Everdeen, but then again so does everyone else. I told her about it in the cave during our first Games together, and the Capitol broadcast it for the entirety of Panem to see. Maybe if I’d thought I had a chance to make it out of the Games, I would have been a little more guarded. However, I was hopeless when she found me by the river. I had no reason to believe I’d survive, let alone that both of us would live to “win” the 74th Annual Hunger Games.

 

What the Capitol didn’t know was that I didn’t admit my most treasured memory of Katniss for the rest of the world to see. No, I kept that safe, kept it secret to cherish for myself, despite how much those images still haunt me.

 

I fell for Katniss when we were so young. I was attracted to her when I saw her at school for the first time, but then she sang, and I felt my young world tilt. I knew from that moment that my life would be inextricably linked with Katniss Everdeen’s until the day I could no longer function on my own.

 

I tried so hard to approach her, to be something more than a weird classmate who watched her every move, but I couldn’t make my feet walk in her direction without an all-encompassing fear that paralyzed me. I jockeyed for position in line to try to get near her, but District 12’s teachers maintained an infuriating policy of arranging students by alphabetical order. Everdeen and Mellark weren’t next to each other in any place other than my own young heart.

 

She was happy for the first few years. Her eyes glittered with interest in elementary school classes. She ran and played at recess with the rest of our classmates. The only time I ever saw a frown on her face was when one of the school bullies cornered her younger sister on the playground before a teacher noticed and stopped the altercation before it began.

 

I went home every day with the hope that the next time I saw her would be the one during which I actually approached her, but each day passed without that coming to fruition. Instead, I spent my time daydreaming about her. My brothers teased me about my crush, but I never admitted to them who it was. They said they could tell I was in love by the look in my eyes, even if they didn’t know for sure who it was. I’m positive they suspected, but both were kind enough to let me keep private something that was so special.

 

Unfortunately, my mother wasn’t nearly as understanding. She hated the “Seam trash” and anyone else she believed was beneath her. It took a number of years before I realized I was one of those people. She hid it from the others at first, but gradually she stopped being stealthy and simply owned up to causing my bruises. At first my brothers seemed to care and tried to protect me, but Panem doesn’t leave a lot of room for altruism. After surviving the reaping for a few years, both brothers realized sacrificing themselves for me wasn’t really going to accomplish anything. In fact, their selflessness would gain nothing but hardship.

 

My dad tried. He always did—with extra love and additional affection that made the rough days easier to bear. I guess Katniss and I both lucked out with father figures, but neither of them could save us from the Capitol’s cruelty. Dad couldn’t protect me from my mother’s neglect or the Games, but Katniss lost everything at a much younger age.

 

It happened during the January when we were both eleven—two months before I turned twelve and Katniss followed behind me several weeks later. The winter was brutal that year, colder than I remembered during my short lifetime, but that wasn’t saying much. My family gathered in the main room of our house above the bakery to sleep, blankets and pallets spread all over the floor as the flames from the fireplace heated the area. The wind howled constantly, and no amount of warm bricks in our beds could keep us from shivering during the night.

 

I remember it feeling like an adventure to me. I was still young enough then to believe my dad when he attempted to make a game out of the starkness of our lives. As affluent as we were in comparison to the rest of District 12, we suffered as well. No one was rich or comfortable in my hometown, but the Mellarks made it through the first weeks of the New Year huddled together on the floor before my brothers and I rose, shook out the stiffness in our joints, and trudged to school in the freezing air.

 

It was during one of those days that tragedy struck. We were sitting in English class when it happened. Ironically, I was in the middle of a persuasive essay I felt was seriously above my grade level about the need for governmental control to create stability and safety in a nation. Even then the Capitol wanted our young minds convinced of the importance of submission. I’d grown frustrated at my inability to convincingly write about the need to blindly follow a cruel dictator when the district sirens blared and each face in the school building fell. Mine accidents were hardly uncommon in a mining district like ours, but when the emergency lights flashed and the alerts bored into our eardrums, I saw fear in the eyes of every single one of my classmates.

 

I had less reason than almost anyone to be frightened. Neither of my parents worked in the mines. My brothers were safe, too. All of my relatives and close acquaintances enjoyed employment in the merchant sector. I knew everyone I cared about was safe—except for those who mattered to the girl I loved and to whom I’d never spoken. It was my adoration for Katniss that made my chest constrict when the sirens blasted through the cinderblock hallways and shook the marrow of my bones.

 

Sadly, mine explosions occurred frequently in District 12—some causing more human damage than others—but every one of them resulted in the same action for both the students and faculty. Everything stopped, kids left to join their families, and whispers of what used to be called prayers slipped from the lips of everyone.

 

When the alarms sounded that day, I jerked my head sharply to the left to catch sight of the girl I adored, but she wasn’t there. Her papers fell to the floor as her trademark braid disappeared out the classroom door and down the hall. I rose quickly and stumbled after her in a desperate attempt to help her if a way became evident. I fought through fellow students as she rushed down the hall to another classroom for a younger grade.

 

“Of course,” I realized. “She went to get her sister.”

 

I stepped away from the classroom door and allowed the hallways to clear until Katniss burst through the doorway, pulling her younger sister behind her. Panic colored her olive skin an ashen gray, and I longed to comfort her before remembering that I meant nothing to her. She didn’t even know who I was, so why would a kind word from me, a merchant boy who’d never said a word to her, ease the fear I knew she held about her father?

 

Katniss dragged Prim through the schoolyard and joined the throng that headed to the mine entrance. There she’d wait for news, good or bad, about her father and the other men of the town.

 

I shook my head to clear my confusion. Everything seemed too intense, too much. We were just kids and should be playing at afternoon recess, not anticipating death. Maybe that was the real cruelty of the Capitol. Starvation stole our childhoods and created premature maturity when so few lived to an old age.

 

I stood at the hall window in frozen indecision for a few minutes before I made up my mind and followed the rest of the town to the scene of the tragedy. Neither of my parents would expect me home during the current situation. Knowing them the way I did, I was sure they’d already packed bundles of bread and headed to the crowds at the mine. Conditions in District 12 didn’t allow for generosity very often, but a crisis like this one was one time it was not only expected but willingly offered.

 

It took several minutes for me to find a family member once I reached the site. The entire district was assembled, and I saw men covered in coal dust and soot hauling others out of the earth. Some seemed fine as they stumbled toward waiting family members who cried in relief as they realized their loved ones lived. Others fell to the ground, battered and burned. Some suffered from patches of skin charred black while others held bright red wounds that had already begun to blister.

 

I tore my eyes from the horror and spotted Katniss standing with her sister and a frail blonde woman with eyes glazed in dread. When Katniss reached for the woman’s hand, I realized it was her mother and also my father’s lost love. I swallowed hard against the pain in my throat and turned to find my dad. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to feel his strong arms around me and his deep voice reassuring me that things would be okay again someday.

 

My oldest brother found me within a few minutes, and I spent the next few hours helping feed both those who worked to evacuate the mine and also the survivors and their family members. It was dark long before I realized Katniss and her family weren’t among those being fed.

 

A desperate fear overtook me as I stood on my tiptoes and scanned the crowd. Triage centers lined the open areas outside the mine entrance, and the streets leading to town held hundreds of people. I couldn’t find her dark braid anywhere—until I turned my gaze toward the roped area where immediate family of the workers continued to wait for information about their missing relatives.

 

Katniss remained standing, one hand clutching the woven boundary that kept her separated from the rescue workers. Her other arm was slung over Prim’s tiny shoulders that shook in what was probably a combination of exhaustion, hunger, and the beginnings of hypothermia. Their mother stood stock still, frozen in place from rapidly waning hope as elevator after elevator of survivors emerged from the bowels of the earth before that gave way to cloth draped causalities.

 

I watched in horror as one victim was carried past where I stood and his arm fell loose from the stretcher on which he was borne. Blistered skin oozed on the forearm, but the hands were what made me struggle to keep bile from rising in my throat. Singed fingers showed bone through layers of scorched flesh, and I gagged so hard I almost vomited when the stench reached my nose. I sent an internal request to any power that could help to please keep Katniss from witnessing something so grotesque with her own father.

 

Sadly, reality may have been worse. When the mine manager returned to the surface, caked in sweat and grime from the depths of the mountain, we all knew what that meant—even me at my overly optimistic age of eleven and three-quarters.

 

Katniss’ eyes grew wide, as did those of a teenage boy who also stood behind the roped barricade. He was older than me by a couple of years at least, and looked so similar to the girl I loved that they could have been siblings. They even reacted similarly when both their mothers wailed in anguish as they realized no one else would come to the surface. No other survivors would return from a grave much deeper than six feet down.

 

Katniss pulled her sister into her arms to comfort her as the boy turned to hold who I assumed was his younger brother. Both Katniss and her male counterpart reached a hand toward their mothers to steady them, but the boy’s parent reacted much differently than the woman my father used to love.

 

The woman clutched her very pregnant belly before gathering her children to her. She cried in the comfort of their arms for a few minutes before lifting her face, wiping her eyes, and squaring her shoulders. A survival instinct sparked in her eyes as she stood in the freezing January night. That was easy to tell even at my young age. She looked intently into the face of her oldest son, and they nodded together, a silent agreement I can only assume was a promise to care for and protect the more vulnerable members of their family.

 

Katniss’ mother fell to her knees. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her eyes grew hollow as her daughters attempted to comfort her. I could see the slump in her shoulders and the way she failed to acknowledge the desperate pleas of her offspring to be all right. It would take years for Mrs. Everdeen to regain a semblance of life beyond a semi-catatonic state due to the loss of her husband. There was no pact between her and her daughters to survive the winter together.

 

That’s part of what made me love Katniss even more after that day—her courage in the face of disaster, her ability to persevere even when her own mother collapsed under the weight of loss, her ability to love selflessly. Mrs. Everdeen’s devotion to her husband almost killed her, but Katniss’ deep connection to her sister propelled her to greatness only a decade or so into her life.

 

Helpless, I stood there with bread in my hand and a broken heart. Smoke continued to pour from the mine entrance while groans from the wounded and frantic shouts from the caregivers swirled in the freezing January night. My eyes remained focused on her, but no one came to her aid. No adult took control and allowed Katniss to be exactly what she was at that moment—a young girl who’d just lost her father.

 

Katniss held her sister and permitted herself one moment of weakness. She buried her face in her sister’s hair for several seconds before lifting her head. A single tear streaked down her cheek, but she swiped at it hastily. She knelt in front of her sibling and cradled the younger girl’s face in her palms before speaking rapidly. Prim nodded, and Katniss turned her attention to her mother. It took several minutes, but the girl I adored was finally able to rouse her mother enough to raise her to her feet. Katniss’ lithe frame supported her mother’s as they slowly wove through the crowd and toward the Seam. Prim followed behind, dutifully holding onto her sister’s skirt so she wouldn’t get separated.

 

Just before she slipped through the crowd, she turned her head, and her gaze locked with mine. I held it only for a few seconds, but her lips tilted up in a soft smile before she whispered a farewell. My head told me that Katniss wasn’t addressing me at all. In reality, she probably didn’t even know she was looking at me. Logically, I knew her goodbye was to her father and maybe to the life she’d just left behind, but my heart told me something else entirely.

 

I  held that image of her—cheeks tinged with cold, eyes determined, shoulders straight, with a gentle curve to her lips—as the one that would define who she was for me. That night she showed her vulnerability and strength, her love and her loss, and I became hers forever.

 

“Peeta!” my mother screeched, shaking me from my stupor. I realized I’d dropped the bread I was holding, and it was ruined—covered in ash and soot and layers of hopelessness.

 

I blinked several times in an attempt to stop my own tears from falling, but I couldn’t. Mom grabbed my upper arm, and I yelped at her strength. Almost immediately, my father pulled me from her grip and cradled me against his chest.

 

“It’s okay, Peeta. I think it’s time for you to go home. You’ve worked hard, son. Thank you for helping out today.” His deep voice rumbled in my ears, and I wondered why I couldn’t feel anything anymore.

 

“I think he’s in shock,” another voice suggested, and I threw my arms around my dad’s neck and held on. I didn’t let go or open my eyes until I was tucked into my own bed where I slipped into a restless slumber.

 

A few days later, Mayor Undersee honored the dead, hailing them as heroes, and I watched as Katniss stoically accepted the award that did nothing more than commemorate the death of her loved one. It was there I discovered the older boy’s name and realized he had much more in common with the girl I loved than I could ever hope. Lost parents, younger siblings, and the hardship of life in the Seam bound them together in a way I would and could never be connected to her, no matter what else happened. That is, until I was reaped the same day Katniss volunteered for her sister.

 

My mother never did quite forgive me for being what she called “weak” the day of the mine accident. She was embarrassed others saw that I couldn’t handle what I saw that day, and her treatment of me deteriorated. When I saw Katniss underneath the tree only a few weeks later, defeated and broken, I realized how quickly fortunes could turn when faced with a life-altering tragedy.

 

All I wanted to do was restore her to what I’d seen at the mine, so the decision to burn the bread and take the beating my outraged mother gave was almost automatic. For once, it felt really good to know I wasn’t helpless.


End file.
